


Harb Boibled Ebbs

by ManhattanProject



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Autistic Jack Zimmermann, Echolalia, M/M, The Overdose, aba therapy, let jack stim and be happy, minor descriptions of meltdowns, this is sad but it has a happy end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManhattanProject/pseuds/ManhattanProject
Summary: Harb Boibled EbbsorFive Times Jack Pretended to be Allistic, and One Time He Didn’t





	Harb Boibled Ebbs

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been in a good enough place to work on my chaptered fic, and this is a result of that. 
> 
> There are descriptions of meltdowns, references to ABA therapy, and a brief post-overdose scene in this fic, so be safe!

1.   
Jack is five and sitting on the couch next to his maman, the room filled with other Pens WAGs and their children of varying ages. The Pens are facing the Caps tonight for their first Stanley Cup match and Alicia is hosting. All the other children are playing with each other, but not Jack. They don’t like him, but Jack doesn’t like them either, so he sits with his maman instead of huddling with the other boys who are all playing Power Rangers.

He’s tired but still keyed up from the meltdown he had in therapy. “It’s normal,” the therapist had told his maman. “There’s going to be a lot of meltdowns in the first few months.” There’s dull pain in his arms from where’d he’d clawed at them with his own hands, and the ghost of his therapist restraining him with her arms sits just under his skin like an itch he can’t get rid of. 

The game on TV succumbs to background noise as the boys roughhouse and the WAGs chat (and occasionally yell at the game), and beneath it all is the radio in the kitchen that Alicia forgot to turn off when the game started. The other kids seem to thrive in the noisy environment, but Jack’s head just hurts, so he presses his palms hard against his ears, trying to muffle the noise that won’t stop. He’s rocking back and forth in his seat and he almost starts to feel calmer, less likely to explode, when maman creases her forehead and raises an eyebrow at him. 

He pulls his hands away and sits on them instead. 

2.   
Jack’s eight now, and he’s only in therapy twice a week. “He’s made such good progress, but there’s still room for improvement,” is what his therapist had said. “He’s not normal enough yet,” is what she had meant. 

There’s a calendar in his room that’s covered in stickers - one gold star for everyday he doesn’t have a meltdown. He tries not to look at it - it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. “Two whole weeks! I’m very proud of you, Jack,” his therapist says when maman tells him about all the golden stars that decorate this month. 

He has a meltdown that evening and maman sticks a sad face on the date. 

The next time he feels overwhelmed he bites the inside of his mouth until he tastes blood, but his therapist praises him and says “You’re doing so well at controlling your emotions, Jack.”

3.   
Jack’s 15 when he meets another autistic kid outside of ABA for the first time. When Matt flaps in public for the first time, Jack is expecting his mother to scold him and tell him “quiet hands”, but she just asks him “Good or bad?” and smiles when he nods his head. 

“What was the hand thing about earlier?” Jack asks later, when the two of them are playing basketball in Matt’s driveway. 

“I was really happy,” Matt says. “I’m autistic, it’s a thing I do.”

“And your mom lets you?”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Matt says with a frown. “Look, you might not get it but -”

“I’m autistic too, I get it,” Jack says. He’s chewing on the inside of his lip now. “I’m not allowed to do that. When I was younger my therapist said it was bad.” 

“I’ve never been to a therapist,” Matt says. “Sounds shitty, though.” 

Jack wants to agree - he can still remember how good it felt to happy flap - but his therapist is there in the back of his mind like she always is, so he bites harder on his lip and goes back to playing basketball. 

4.   
Jack’s 18 now, and he’s been diagnosed with anxiety on top of the autism, and he listens to two therapists now. The new one tells him “take these when you feel anxious” and sends him on his way, so he does. 

The trouble is he feels anxious a lot, and Kent tries to take care of him, to protect him, but Kent has his own problems and Jack just wants everything to stop. It’s too much, and he can hear the voice of his old therapist telling him he needs to control his emotions, to regulate himself, to stop being dramatic - so he takes the pills. 

He wakes up in a hospital room, and he doesn’t talk for awhile, but eventually he says “He said to take them when I felt anxious. I felt anxious. I don’t like feeling like that.”

5\.   
Jack is 24 now, and he’s learned that it’s okay for him to be autistic - that the things he does aren’t bad and he doesn’t need to be fixed - but he still doesn’t stim around people he doesn’t trust.

Shitty is the first person he tells, and Jack subsequently spends a lot of time in Shitty’s room, because Shitty doesn’t care if Jack comes into his room at 2am, nonverbal, and just wants to be crushed in a tight hug. “I’ve always fuckin’ got your back, brah,” Shitty tells him, “and I’ll personally fight anyone who has a problem.” 

Despite the way he feels better when he can exist around Shitty without restraining himself, he still doesn’t tell the rest of the team. He spends a lot of time alone in his room preventing meltdowns, shutdowns, sensory overload. He likes to stim when he studies, so he studies alone. He’s gotten used to happy flapping around Shitty, so he lets the team run with the Hockey Robot joke. 

It’s easier to pretend he doesn’t have emotions than it is to use allistic ones.

+1   
Jack’s 32 now, and he doesn’t hear the voices of his therapists in his mind anymore. Instead he hears the voice of a small blond Georgia baker, and it’s more than Jack ever thought he would get.

When Jack has a meltdown now, Bitty lays on the floor next to him and hums until Jack is calmer and lets himself be pulled tight in Bitty’s arms, face buried in his shoulder as he breathes in the calming scent of cinnamon and cologne. 

For awhile Jack hadn’t let himself stim in front of Bitty, didn’t want to scare him off, but after one particular conversation (“sweetheart I have ADHD, you’re not the only one in this relationship who stims.”) he learned to just let himself exist as he was around the other man. Now when Bitty wakes up in the morning it’s to Jack humming to himself, or running his fingers through Bitty’s hair to feel the texture. 

“The way I feel around you is like the feeling of burying my hands in a bag of flour, Bitty, and I want to feel that forever,” he had said when he proposed, and Bitty had immediately started crying (“This is good crying, sweetheart. Of course I’ll marry you.”). 

These days there’s less of the romantic crying and more of the lighthearted silliness thanks to their 5 year old daughter Anna. Bitty comes home from work one day to find his husband and daughter sitting across from each other on the floor and repeating the same phrase at each other as they color. When Jack hears Bitty he whispers something to Anna that makes her laugh, then follows his husband into the kitchen.

“Hi Bits,” Jack says, leaning down to kiss him. 

“Hey sweetheart,” Bitty says, smiling. “Harb boibled ebbs again?”

Jack just laughs and pulls Bitty into a tight hug and thinks about how he’s the luckiest man in the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic is based on things I've dealt with in life as an autistic person, and this was kind of a therapeutic thing for me with how my life has been lately (ie I do not want any criticism, even constructive, on this).


End file.
